EXECUTE
by MAGO5
Summary: It is the far future, and humanity has long since faded away. The planet is now populated by creatures that are strange and alien. It is in this era that a small sliver of the ancient, long-forgotten past has resurfaced. Left without purpose, without a reason to exist, he must discover what happened to his race, or cope with the fact that he is the last of his kind...


_*vvvvvvVVVVRRRRRT!*_ *Clang-thup!* *THUD!*

Within a fraction of a second after landing, he corrected his trajectory, drew his sidearm, and aligned its sights past the machinery into-

...Darkness. No targets, no hostiles, no friendlies. There was nothing.

Nevertheless, he held his guard. From his vantage, lying on the floor, he absorbed the details within his line-of-sight. There existed a mere 1.5 lumens before him, tinted blue, from an unknown source. He adjusted his optics to compensate. When he could start to make out shapes, he came to the conclusion that he was still within an enclosed structure, barring the jagged doorway at the other end of the room. Curtains of what appeared to be thick foliage hung from the top of the exit. The same foliage dotted the ceiling of the room, save the center where the Stasis Field Generator sat. No, the shapes were too smooth to be vegetation, and they had counterparts upon the floor of the room that mirrored their conical form. They were rock formations. Stalactites and stalagmites.

He shifted his optics towards one of the closer walls and found the source of the room's illumination. A carpet of bioluminescent lichen covered the surface of the wall in large, irregular patches and exuded a faint azure glow. Searching his databanks proved to be futile, as the species was, evidently, undocumented.

Cycling his optics to infrared vision, he could find no heat sources, moving or stationary. Some heat radiated from the machine, but it was quickly dissipating. His sonic sensors scrubbed the background noise, but could find nothing more than faint dripping and what sounded like the burbling of a stream in the distance. After concluding that there were nothing more than rudimentary lifeforms in his vicinity, he relaxed and began to lift himself from the ground. Sheathing his sidearm and stowing it away with a series of mechanical whirs and clicks that echoed throughout the room, he placed the palm of his hand on the weathered surface of the room's floor and pushed. A clutter of stone resounded as remnants of broken stalagmite cascaded off his armored body. A short moment later, he was on his feet, swiveling his head and taking in the entire scene.

It had only occurred to him right then, but he remembered that he had recently logged an impact on his person. He brought his hand up to his helmet, brushing along the light scar where the ballistic grazed him. The damage was less than minor, but the trouble was that he could not recall a bullet being fired at him. With a scant turn of his head, he found a bullet-sized impact point on the wall opposite of the entrance. Converging towards it, and circumventing a couple more rock formations, his optics' diagnostics found it was made mere seconds ago. He found that odd, for there was no auditory sign of a discharged firearm, nor the minute scent of gunsmoke in the air. The impact's angle and size also ruled out the possibility of the shot having been fired from outside the room. No, the shooter must have been within the room, standing mere feet from the Stasis-

This sudden realization jarred him out of his present, situational analysis. Brought on by the frantic firing of synapses in his mind, he whirled around and rushed towards the machine. The console had rusted away considerably and the internals had already gone cool. To confirm his fears, he cycled through every known communication frequency and increased his receiving range to its maximum capability.

Silent. Every one of them.

He attempted to power on the generator. No luck, for it seemed the facility's power plant had finally gone dark. He would have none of that. Ripping off the console's corroded access panel, he found an auxiliary power input. He withdrew an energy-feed cable from his suit and plugged it in, the connector automatically adjusting to fit the socket. He only needed to siphon enough into the apparatus to gather information from the console. He manipulated the keyboard delicately, for it was on the verge of shattering with the slightest excess of force. The screen came to life with a sputtering flicker. It was dim, but he could make out a few details.

 **-STATUS: POWERED DOWN; CRITICAL POWER FAILURE**

 **-LOG: ...ADMINISTRATIVE ACCESS CONFIRMED**

 **-USER: RPR-AH13B3**

 **-RUN TIME OF LAST SESSION: EerR00r-R.!#****

In frustration, he yanked the power cable from the panel and, with a violent series of sparks, the console died a final death. He stood there for a moment, allowing the silence to creep back into the echoing room. The deathly quiet was broken by the sound of whirring servos as he turned his body to find something on the floor.

Kneeling down and resting his heavy metal frame on one knee, the ancient form of a human skeleton was made apparent. Its empty sockets gazed lifelessly towards the ceiling and its desiccated jaw rested on its spinal column in halves. There was a prominent jagged hole adorning its forehead, likely created by a bullet. A stalagmite had formed on the body where the abdomen would have been, giving the appearance that the lifeless remains had been impaled upon the rock. Despite the futility of the gesture, he languidly reached out towards the weathered skull and whispered a single word.

"Gregor..."

Upon his fingertip's contact, the cranium caved inward and disintegrated completely with a puff of dust. It did not matter that he immediately withdrew his hand; the damage had been done. All that remained of the head were brittle fragments and pallid grain.

He curled his fingers into a tight fist. Gregor was the most promising acolyte he had ever encountered. He was brilliant, driven, and completely prepared to make the necessary sacrifices to better serve the whole of humanity... and they killed him. They killed him and left his corpse to rot in the open air, while he himself was left to a fate worse than death.

His mind started to buzz with an indescribable feeling of pressure; a buildup of rage. Anger of such intensity, the likes of which he hadn't felt in decades. He cradled his head in his hands, as if he could contain the inferno that threatened to split his skull open. He traced his visual playback to the series of events that lead to this moment: Gregor's demonstration of his Stasis Generator, the disturbance at the door, the explosion that hurled him into the active stasis field, the incomprehensible blur of time flying away before his eyes. He saw the acolyte's flesh atrophy and disappear, leaving nothing but sacred bones. He watched helplessly as time wasted away the room, turning it into a cold, lifeless cavern, touched by nothing for what must have been eons. Everything was lost to him in a matter of moments. All of his comrades no longer existed. Civilization, likely, has long since disappeared. The Shepherds...

He was probably the only one left. He was truly alone.

 _Damn them..._

He could no longer contain his fury. His arm swung wildly, decimating a nearby column of rock, sending the grey shards flying across the room. He stomped over to the Stasis Generator, lifted his arms above his head, and brought the double hammers down upon it. The toll of crunching metal and silicon resounded throughout the underground facility. Again and again, ripping and tearing at the device until nothing was left but twisted steel and sputtering cables. A deafening roar of rage and agony tore from behind his faceplate, cursing fate and the ones who took everything from him.

 **"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"**

Twilight Sparkle's ear twitched. Her equine nose left the embrace of the musty pages of the tome she had propped on her comforter. Though silence reigned in the empty library that was her home, save the distant, indistinguishable noises of nighttime in Ponyville, she had heard, or rather, _felt,_ an urgent disturbance. It filled her with enough concern that she marked her place in her book, gently levitated it to her nightstand, and scooted out of the toasty confines of her bed. Her hoofs landed on the wooden floor with a quartet of soft clops. Making her way to the small circular window overlooking the sleeping town, her lavender magic unlatched the lock and carefully opened it, trying not to wake the inhabitant snoozing in the miniscule basket beside her bed. The frigid night air penetrated her fur down to her bones, causing her to shiver slightly as she peered out the open window. Summer was beginning to turn to Fall. The days were getting shorter, and the nights, longer. Soon, the leaves will start to fall, then the snow will come soon after. By then, she won't be able to afford to let the cold in like this, even for strange ventures of curiosity. This feeling of unease, no matter how long she gazed out upon the expanse of shingled roofs and occasional flickers of candlelight, would not go away. Nay, it seemed to only grow stronger, like the incessant noise of an insect, flying weaving about in her personal space. She strained her ears, leaned out the window, and tried to make out anything over the constant chirping of crickets. A scream, a beastial roar, a-

"Twilight...?"

Her attempt to avoid disturbing her assistant, Spike, was in vain. Twilight whipped around, window still open and a gentle, cool breeze tugging at the strands of her mane. The cherub-like dragon was upright in his bed, massaging his tired eyes with his balled claws. The unicorn quickly closed the window, latched it close, and the cold fluttering ceased.

"Sorry, Spike." The librarian quickly apologized. "Go back to sleep. I... I thought I heard something, but it was probably nothing."

It was not without good reason to go and check, she surmised with in her mind. After all, Ponyville has had incidents in the past; incidents that could have possibly been lessened or prevented with vigilance and preparation. _"Better safe than sorry,"_ Echoed the old adage in her head. That being noted, looking out the window in consternation wasn't going to do anypony good, and heaping such concern on her draconic assistant would do even less good. For now, any investigations would have to wait. It had been a long day for both of them. Mere hours ago, they had finally finished reshelving the entire library, which involved a lot of concentration on Twilight's part, having to levitate and alphabetize all 2,467 books in her library, and a lot of running up and down the basement stairs with armfulls of books for Spike. Some books were too old or esoteric to keep on the ground-level shelves, and they had to make room for new books as well, but, unfortunately for the baby dragon, the aforementioned obsolete books just so happened to be most of the leather and iron-bound tomes of yore, some of them as thick as the width of his head! He was exhausted by the end of it, so if anyone deserved a full night of sleep, it was him.

Thankfully, Spike didn't share his surrogate sister's urgency, and calmly sank back into his pillow. Twilight immediately let out a stifled yawn. She, too, was tired and in need of rest. While her tasks had not been as physical as Spike's, the strain of maintaining spellwork for hours on end had taken a toll on her. If she pushed herself anymore, she would have been hit with a throbbing migraine. Now feeling the weight of her bones attempting to drag her down to the cold floor, she languidly trotted back to her bed, crawled back in, and pulled the blankets over her body with her magic. With another gesture, the dim oil lamp that helped her read in the dark hours of the evening was extinguished. She fidgeted in her bed until she found a comfortable position, sighed, and finally relaxed.

"Goodnight, Spike..." Was the last thing she whispered before Twilight drifted off into deep sleep.


End file.
